1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for processing data, and in particular, to a system and method for managing and controlling accounts of potential customers with generated profile information. The profile information can contain pre-developed inferences about the potential customers.
2. Related Art
In a typical passive sales scheme, a customer initiates contact with a seller that is known to have specific products or services desired by the customer. In this type of sales scheme, the seller does not have direct control of customer contact. As such, in passive marketing, the sale of a product or service is dependent on customer initiated contact with a seller that a customer knows has a specific product or service desired by the customer. Typically, for passive marketing, sellers usually use public dissemination, including radio, television, Internet and public directories to make their products/services known to customers. However, mass public dissemination is expensive and does not always reach all potential customers of the seller.
In one example, some sellers provide searchable computer listings with the hope that an interested customer will find the listing. For instance, if a customer desires to purchase a home, typically, the customer can search a seller created database of home listings. The customer can usually search the home listings based on certain criteria defined by the customer. However, this type of passive marketing limits the sales power of a seller because customers have to initiate contact with the seller and the seller does not know what customers specifically desire before contact is made by the customers.
Thus, sellers of products or services typically prefer active marketing or targeted marketing sales schemes. Active marketing or target marketing involves the seller actively seeking or targeting only those customers that the seller believes would be potentially interested in the product or service offered by the seller. For example, in a typical targeted marketing sales scheme, a seller attempts to find and advertise to specific customers (targeted customers) that are thought to be interested in the seller's products or services. These customers are usually thought to be interested in certain products or services because they at one time or another showed some type of an interest in these certain products or services, indicated through, for example, mailing lists for these certain products or services. Hence, target marketing is preferred by sellers because the seller is in control, which creates a higher likelihood that a sale will be generated.
However, many current targeting marketing schemes are expensive, time consuming and difficult. This is because many current target marketing schemes require either purchasing expensive established mailing lists or manually evaluating surveys or questionnaires. Therefore, what is needed is a system and method that electronically attracts customers and targets potential customers by generating, managing and controlling profile information of potential customers that match predefined criteria. What is also needed is an automated software system and method that attracts customers and generates customer profile information from inferred data for allowing a seller to actively seek potential customers that would be interested in the seller's specific products or services.